Here is a strange question for you guys. I have been burning pellets in my new pellet stove back at the camp. It is working great. Could you burn these pellets in a gasification boiler? If you had a nice bed of hot coals from cord wood. Could you add a mix of cord wood and pellets? I know the question back may be, Why would you? I am just curious. Maybe if I wanted to extend my wood supply a little longer by adding them in every once in a while. I am also thinking of adding them in to a load of cordwood in the burn chamber when things get really cold outside as a BTU boost. This is where I think I would more than likely do this. When things get down below zero outside and I am looking for a little more BTUs. I am thinking of filling a cardboard half gallon milk container with the pellets and set them in the burn chamber, either on top of the cord wood for some BTUs at the end of the cord wood being gone or may in the middle. What do you think?
i think you would need to contain them so that they all dont fall into the secondary chamber. perhaps toss them in on top of splits and they will fill all the gaps between splits. this may really help if you have less then optimally seasoned wood. but why not get the bio-bricks or something of the like if you are buying processed stuff anyway? i know my vedolux can accept a pellet head (a consideration when i bought it in case i get to a point in my life where i no longer can/want to cord wood), but im pretty sure the pellets are burned in the head and just the ash falls into the burn chamber.
Throw a bag on top of some coals and let us know how it goes. I've never tried pellets but if I have enough coals I can fill the boiler up with pretty green woodchips and it gasses just fine. If I ever get desperate I might try pellets.
For the old Jetstream pellets would be BAD news! The forced combustion air into the burn chamber is designed to burn only a measured amount of wood. The loading tube and burn chamber have a total height of 42" and a 12" diameter with only the bottom 16" of the burn chamber intended to burn wood and not the wood in the loading chamber portion that is surrounded by the water of the heat exchanger. I have set up the wood drying system so that the wood is under cover for over 2 years in the wood shed and achieves a moisture content of about 17% which is ideal moisture content for most gasification boiler. But 2 1/2 cords can be stored in the boiler room with a annual wood consumption of 4 1/2 cords per year and where the boiler room can reach temperatures of 110-120F during a 7 hour burn cycle, so most of the wood burnt is under 7%. Ideal split size would be 3 to 5 splits from a 12" round. With the really dry wood only 2 or 3 splits can be burned at a time as there is just not enough oxygen for complete combustion. With the super dried wood, boiler output remains the same but a lot less wood is burned to bring storage up to temperature. The problem that results from trying to burn a complete charge all the smoke that is generated cannot be burned efficiently and worst case scenario caused is puffing. The fire is momentarily extinguished for lack of oxygen and reignites with explosions of varying degrees. My feeling is if the extra smoke being generated by the pellets cannot be burned cleanly as it passes through the secondary burn nozzle, little will be gained. But some literature that I have read tells that there are boilers that can burn wood waste such as sawdust, woodwork shop waste or pellets up to a certain percentage of a full burn chamber charge. So for these boilers you should follow the recommended percentages and all should be well. On the Jetstream, the cool water jacketed portion of the loaded tube quenches combustion in this area, but with super dry wood combustion does take place in the loading tube generating more smoke than can be burned cleanly because of fixed rate of combustion air, so the amount of fuel available for combustion has to be reduced. I have also tried to use a larger capacity blower with interesting but negative results. The interesting result was almost doubling the boilers output; the negative side was that burn became so hot that the refractory was starting to disintegrate.
Well I tried burning some wood pellets in the boiler. I waited until I had a nice deep bed of glowing hot coals. I had a bag of pellets I had bought that I was not impressed with in the Pellet Stove so I burned them up a little at a time. I did not keep a close eye on things when I did this unfortunately , but they seem to burn fine and I noticed no difference in the boiler from burning just wood. This is a good sign, the heat was good. So if I wanted to supplement and save some of my firewood stash, I could use pellets for a percentage of what I was burning and save on my wood stash. I wonder what a ton of pellets is equal to in firewood. Every once in a while you can see them on sale at a ridiculously low price. I will keep my eye open. Does anyone think the glue, or whatever they use to keep these things together could cause any problems with the boiler?
I think the pellets are just compressed no glue or binder. I could be wrong but thats what I recall someone telling me when I was looking into pellet stoves.
Yep, natural lignin within the wood binds them when they are pressed through the die (the heat from the extrusion causes them to bind with lignin). They look shiny like there is a binding agent, but it's a natural binding agent within the wood. Itself. Very neat thread and that boiler in the video was a sweet set up
